“You’re not taking over him. You’re simply taking his place. This universe’s August is gone and dead. You might get some of his thoughts and his feelings but you will still be you.”
“If he is dead and gone, why will a part of him become a part of me?”
“It’s just speculation. Your God made all of the life in this universe interconnected when he made the Wavering Radiant.”
August didn’t know how to feel about that. He didn’t deserve a second chance. But he was given one anyways, he couldn’t squander it.
The Omniscient Man moved in front of him.
“Two years from now. That’s when you’re going to awake.”
“Two years? Why two years?”
“It seems like the perfect time to me. Your brother had become the rebel leader and ran the gods into a corner. The final battle to decide who will rule over humanity will take place two years from now. If you don’t join in, they’ll lose.”
“Two years.” Two years was a long time, he wondered how much his brother would have changed in two years.
The Omniscient Man’s arm glowed its million-color glow. “Close your eyes. When I touch your forehead, we will go two years into the future. The events of those two years will flash through your head as you travel through time. It’s a hard experience but I’m sure you can take it.”
That sounded easier than dying a thousand times.
“Let’s get this over with,” August said.
The Omniscient Man raised his hand to August’s head and August closed his eyes.
With a touch, hundreds of images and sounds whirled into his head, visions of the war on the gods and his brother’s fight.
15
A Man Amongst gods
It was a week after Svante bled.
Kevan stood in a warehouse with over two hundred people. People he saved from the Bay of Apes. There were over a thousand prisoners. Some went home, others into hiding, but these two hundred wanted to do something more. They had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Nowhere to go.
They all wanted to fight.
Who was Kevan to say no to them?
He stood on a ledge, surrounded by veteran rebel officers. Ezekiel had told them that if he had died, then to make August or Kevan the rebel leader.
Why would Ezekiel give him such a position? He barely knew Ezekiel. But Kevan accepted the position nevertheless. It was the only way he could make a change, the only way he could avenge his brother.
He wanted to stay with his wife and kids, to take care of them. But Luna had told him that what he was doing with the rebels was far more worthwhile than changing some diapers.
In the crowd below, the new rebels were given finite weapons. Gems of various colors. With those weapons, they were going to change the world.
One of Kevan’s head commanders, Yakiv, spoke from his right, “More are coming every day.”
“How are they finding us?” Kevan asked.
“We have people to lead them down the right path. A vetting process, if you will.”
“I didn’t go through a vetting process.”
“Ezekiel already vetted you. That was good enough for all of us. He sacrificed himself to the cause. He was a good man and according to him, so are you.”
So are you. Just because he fought a god, all these people started following him. Just because he had fought Svante and won.
The whole world knew of his battle. Even though he didn’t kill him, humanity had seen a god bleed. Videos of his fight were scattered all over the internet. Slowly, the world would know that the gods were not invincible.
The rebels had accepted his leadership so quickly. Accepted that he would lead them to salvation when he could barely lead himself.
All because he did what they couldn’t, did what they dreamed of.
Svante wasn’t dead, but Kevan showed that it was possible to fight them. He was their liberator.
He looked down at the finite gems being passed around. He wished his brother could’ve been here at his side. He was going to make Svante pay for what he’d done.
“How many finite weapons do we have?” Kevan asked.
“Enough for all the rebels and the hundreds joining every day.”
Kevan had kept in contact with the Omniscient Man after he broke into the Bay of Apes. He thanked him for his help and tried to give back the power he gave him. But the Omniscient Man told him to keep it.
The power felt wrong. While he had the power to change things, the others were left with the far less powerful finite weapons. Even if they could combine them, his power was still far greater than all of them.
“How many does each rebel get?” Kevan asked Yakiv.
“Three for the newbies and more for the veterans and the ones who have proven themselves worthy.”
“Don’t give anybody more than ten. If they use more than that, then they could be torn apart by the power.” A small detail that the Omniscient Man had told him.
“Yes sir,” the commander snapped to attention.
It felt weird, he had a lot more than family to worry about now. He had to lead an army.
Two weeks after Svante bled.
* * *
An office window exploded out in the downtown of Savannah, Georgia. A headless man fell out of it.
Kevan peered over the edge, he held a radio in his hand. “God of agriculture is dead,” he said into it.
He heard a woman screaming. Through the office doors behind him, rebels ran to the left.
He ran to the doorway.
“A god is trying to escape!” a rebel yelled. In the large open office, all the employees were tied up in the corner.
A woman in tight office clothes ran impossibly fast for the exit. The god of lust, Anja, a minor god.
A rebel jumped in front of her and her fist punched straight through his belly. She flung him off to the side and continued for the door.
A flash zoomed by her and her gut exploded open. She screamed as she fell down.
Kevan lowered his gun. He could hear her cries as she dragged herself toward the exit.
“Please! Please!” she pled as she continued for the door.
Shit. Kevan wanted it to be the killing blow. It reminded him that even though he had the power to kill a god, they were still gods and they were still very hard to kill.
Kevan walked up to her, ignoring the blood trail she was leaving. The rebels watched her struggle for the door. It was ten feet away and at the pace she was going, it would’ve taken her the better part of an hour to get there.
Kevan stood over her and pointed his gun at her head. The rebels surrounded her.
“Please,” she cried. “I’m a nobody… I never hurt anybody. I’m…I’m just a minor god… please… please don’t kill me… please!” It was getting pitiful, her makeup ran down her teary face.
Kevan held his trigger. A nobody. A minor god.
She was right. All of the reports in Savannah about her were positive. The gods who ruled over the city never suppressed the humans, they never did any bad that the rebels had seen. In fact they were loved, worshiped even.
Anja covered her face, trying to block his gun barrel. The only reason they raided this Ifor office was because they needed to hit somewhere unexpected, they needed to be random, unpredictable in their movements.
She wasn’t a fighter and Kevan couldn’t pull the trigger.
He couldn’t kill her.
Anja’s head exploded and she fell dead.
Yakiv lowered his gun. “No mercy for any god, man or woman. No matter who they are or what they’ve done.”
He was right. He couldn’t hesitate. This was a war. No hesitation. If there was one thing he learned from his father, it was that hesitation was death.
Later, he was grateful there was only one rebel death that day. Throughout the war, there would have been thousands.
Kevan turned to his commander, “Where to next?”
“The Blight.”
>
“Okay. Roll out!” Kevan commanded.
Two months after Svante bled.
* * *
Kevan looked into a pair of binoculars at an immense fortress. It was bigger than the Bay of Apes. A prison for humans.
The only difference between the Blight and the Bay of Apes was the Blight had humans who were proven rebels, locked up and tortured for years. All the prisoners used to be fighters.
It was over a month since they raided the Savannah Ifor office. Now they were in Oregon.
Kevan could see how the rebels never got stamped out. They had their main headquarters in California. Oddly close to the gateway to heaven, the Tower of the Gods, Ifor’s main headquarters.
But when choosing missions and objectives to pursue, the process was chaotic. A random target was chosen in a random location on a random day. There was no logical progression in their order of objectives.
After choosing the next objective, they would choose a meet time and a place. They would never come in contact with anyone else until that time. Unless they were called upon.
After the raid in Savannah, every rebel walked a different path, each had to find their own way to Oregon, their own places to stay, their own paths of progression. So if one of them got caught, it was nearly impossible for the others’ locations to be given up.
Only the top brass, like Kevan, kept in contact with management. To give orders if they were needed and to relay messages.
Kevan continued to stare at the Blight through his binoculars. His commander was next to him, doing the same.
A giant explosion blew out the wall. Kevan shielded his eyes and looked back when the light faded.
Hundreds of prisoners ran through the gaping hole in the wall as fifty rebels made their way in. Flashes of laser-like lights flew around them. The rebel’s finite weapons made the gun fight look like a light show. They were learning how to channel the power instead of using material rounds.
It reminded Kevan of a movie called Star Wars he'd seen a long time ago. He was sad it never got a sequel.
The prisoners were running toward the tree line. Once they made it that far, they were gone from the gods’ grasp forever. The rebels who entered the prison would make sure that the rebels who went undercover to release the prisoners escaped as well. Leave no man behind. His commander gave his dissenting opinion about that part of the plan, but the choice wasn’t up to him.
His commander spoke up, “See, you don’t even need to lift a finger.”
“I guess you were right. And here I was, wanting to go in guns blazing.”
“You are our leader now, you don’t always have to put yourself in harm’s way anymore.”
Kevan watched as the last rebel ran into the tree line. “Looks like it.” A leader. That was what he had to be.
Kevan looked away as the Blight erupted in flames. His job here was done.
Six months after Svante bled.
* * *
He looked out of a window and down into the streets of New York City. Below, the street was filled with protestors and in front of them was a raised platform with a pedestal.
Ifor was written on the front of it.
Behind the platform, two hundred soldiers of the God’s Hand were standing at parade rest.
The protestors were getting restless. Chanting “Down with Ifor!” They were angry, mad at what the gods had been doing to them for all these years.
What the rebels were doing was working. They showed the masses that they could fight back.
The chanting swelled as three figures walked onto the platform. The mayor simply introduced the two gods and walked off. He was smart.
Kevan opened his window and grabbed his rifle from his side. He rubbed the hilt. It was getting worn; the Omniscient Man said he didn’t need a physical object to use his power, but it felt sentimental to him. He was going to use it until it broke.
He pulled a scope out of his pocket and screwed it onto a rail on the top of his gun. His energy rounds had incredible range and shot straighter than any bullet he had fired before.
It was time to try a new tactic.
Through the scope, he looked at the two gods on the stage. Vigi, the god of trade. A fitting title seeing how he watched over one of the most successfully commerce-driven cities in the world.
The scope moved to Dian, the goddess of fire. Vigi’s protection, as he was no fighter, even though they both were major gods. He wished it was Queen in his sights. But she hadn’t shown herself since his battle with Svante.
Vigi spoke to the masses, Kevan only caught pieces of what he was saying over the crowd.
“Please…Trust Ifor…He is in his…The rebels…”
Whatever he was saying wasn’t working. Dian's eyes were scanning the crowd.
Keven better hurry up. His trigger released as Vigi’s head split open. Before Dian could react, her scalp was forcibly removed.
As they collapsed, the crowd cheered. Soldiers ran around the platform and stood at attention. The crowd pushed up against them but when the soldier’s rifles raised, the crowd backed up.
Kevan was done here.
One year after Svante bled.
* * *
Kevan stared out of another window. This time, Louisville, Colorado. He looked on from the third story balcony of his hotel room. It was the highest point he could find in the town at the moment.
A row of God’s Hand soldiers lined the sidewalks as protestors protested in the streets. Kevan could see the line of unrest in the soldiers, the agitation in the protestors’ faces.
Yakiv was against him coming here. He said it was stupid and against their plans of creating chaos.
But that was getting them nowhere. They created chaos in the world but they left the normal population to deal with it. It was wrong that they forced it upon them. So, Kevan came here with only a few of his men.
There was a clash in the streets. Two sides of protestors. One for the rebels and one for the gods.
The rebels chanted “Down with Ifor,” with signs asking ‘What did the gods ever do for us?’
And the supporters chanted “Infidels,” “Heretics,” “Nonbelievers.”
It was getting heated. If anything was going to happen, it was going to happen in this town. His sources said there were more rebel supporters than Ifor supporters here.
He needed to start a movement now. The gods were disoriented and when they found their feet again, the fight would become that much harder.
The crowd got rowdy. A fight broke out between the two sides. Bottles and rocks flew through the air. Kevan watched as a man swung a bat into a teenage girl’s face, and then what looked like the girl’s father pulling out a knife and stabbing the man in the neck.
It was getting chaotic. But Kevan had to wait. The soldiers started to murmur. They were supposed to be keeping peace but they were doing nothing.
The crowd got more violent as gunshots rang into the air.
“Come on…” Kevan whispered as he watched from his perch.
The soldiers stepped forward and raised their guns to the crowd. Their commander yelled for them to disperse or to see the wrath of God.
The crowd didn’t stop. The commander raised his arm and swung down.
Bullets erupted into the protestors of both sides and people started dropping like rocks. Screams erupted into the air.
That was what he needed. Kevan pulled a radio out of his pocket. “It’s on.”
Suddenly, hundreds of men came into the streets, their finite weapons lighting up into the soldiers. The soldiers scrambled, as they had never expected to feel pain as a Touched.
Kevan only brought a few of his men. But as their cause grew, his men now numbered in the hundreds of thousands. He had an army. The thousand he brought with him were nothing.
Bodies of dead civilians and soldiers were pushed into piles off of the streets. Kevan stood at his balcony; last night’s fight was hectic. He didn’t join in, he didn’t need to, but he watche
d and commanded from his tower.
There were casualties on both sides. But it was an overwhelming victory for the rebels. No gods joined the battle.
Kevan guessed they were cowering in the heavens above. This was his small town of twenty-thousand now.
A line was leading out of the city. The supporters of Ifor. His men wanted them strung along the street lamps but he had stopped them before they could.
The Ifor supporters carried all they could on their backs. Most of their cars were burned and over turned after the battle. The rebel supporters. A rowdy bunch.
He disliked what they had done. Some of them were throwing rocks at the Ifor supporters as they left, screaming obscenities at them.
But he couldn’t get them to stop. They had been living under the rule of the gods for their entire lives. They had a lifetime of pent-up energy and rage. As long as they weren’t going around killing and pillaging, he had to be fine with it.
And now with a rebel town under his control, he was going to have to take the bad with the good.
One year and ten months after Svante bled.
* * *
Explosions erupted around Kevan as he ran up a hill road. He wiped the blood from his left eye. It was gone for good now.
He clutched his father’s rifle in his right hand as if it was his own child. His shirt was half torn off and his left arm bloodied. He grimaced as he flexed it.
Still good.
The last explosion nearly took off his top half.
The top of the hill was close. He just had to run a little bit more.
Something flashed in his eye and he barreled to his left, dodging a white blinding blade that swung over his head.
He grimaced as he forced himself up with his left arm. A god stood in front of him, holding a blade of light. Kevan didn’t care who he was. He just knew that he was a minor god and in his way.
Kevan rocketed at the god. The god raised his blade and Kevan’s rifle smashed right through it and through the unlucky god.
Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 224